


No Respite

by Wecanhaveallthree



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:47:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23344960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wecanhaveallthree/pseuds/Wecanhaveallthree
Summary: After a pre-emptive strike on a Dark Eldar raid goes awry, Helix Adept Cabar is left to continue the mission, one Lamenter alone in a hostile city.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	1. Chapter 1

The faintest of ripples slunk along the water’s dark surface, grasping and clinging to the cracked stone and half-rotten wood of Belamor’s docks. A host of creatures - caped moths, skimmers, fat-bodied insects - skimmed just above the ogling, eager eyes of harbour fish as they swam through the human detritus that found its way from city to harbour. It promised to be an evening of anticipation: when the fliers came too close to the water, when they clumped and swarmed, only then would those below strike. Until then…

A stalk of metal slid up through the grungy liquid. Fish and insects scattered away from the intrusion in their nightly dance. A smooth pane of dusky yellow metal followed, rounded in the curvature of a skull. Then came the crimson-filled sockets, unblinking, focused on the shoreline ahead.

Helix Adept Cabar pushed himself through the sucking mud and slime to gain a firm footing on what could be loosely considered solid ground. Garbage, seaborne weeds and overconfident leeches clung to his armour. He’d walked up and down the collected centuries of trash that a moderately busy port accumulates, and - while there were certainly some things in the muck that would be of no small interest to Imperial scholars - the Space Marine had no desire to go back any time soon.

There were more pressing matters, his desires notwithstanding.

Cabar dropped the wrecked half-corpse he’d been carrying into the muck. When the Infiltrator Squad had made their daring assault on the Drukhari hover-barge, the fighting had been intense, requiring the demi-Apothecary to focus much more on combat than his usual work of triage and progenoid extraction. Forced up and over the side, he’d had only a moment to drag one of his attackers with him before falling away from the battle.

The _intention_ had been to interrogate the xeno for information. Not the greatest plan in the world, considering their resistance - even enjoyment - of most persuasive techniques. If nothing else, it would have been satisfying to end the creature personally.

Still. Looking down on the ragged torso - the lower half had snagged on something during their underwater trek and been torn away - the outcome was acceptable. The withered body, the pale skin torn away in strips, the empty holes in the skull where eager scavengers had made their way in for the juiciest morsels, the shelled things slithering up exposed entrails. It did the hearts good to see one of that arrogant species laid so crassly low.

A civilisation might rule the stars for untold aeons, but this was the fate of all aliens: dead in the mud with vermin eating their insides. Even the oldest races of the galaxy would be food for worms in the end. Only the Imperium would endure.

‘Cabar to squad,’ he tried on the vox. No response was forthcoming, but he hadn’t expected one. Both the Drukhari and Imperials were making good use of wide-spectrum jamming equipment, attempting to foul the other side’s use of communications and sensitive technologies. Both had intended their goals to be accomplished in secret. The pitched battle in a hovercraft, bolters blazing and war-cries bellowing, had put something of a tarnish on that objective.

Then again, as the Helix Adept looked up at the sheer stone wall that separated the dock proper from incoming vessels, maybe stealth had never been possible, to begin with. The number of moored ships was suspiciously low for a berth of this volume, and there were no raised voices from harbourside bars or crews burning the midnight oil. Not even the retch, pitch and piss of drunks and vagrants.

Just the slow, endless wash of breakers on shore, the creak of timber and the low hum of power armour. A city holding its breath as the binary moons hid their pale, pocked faces behind a veil of clouds.

Perfect.

Cabar’s leap took him a good two-thirds of the way up the wall, the slip-activated spikes of the Phobos boots digging in to anchor him. He reached up to grasp a mooring peg, an ancient iron affair coated with rust and grime, hauling himself up and over the quay’s lip in a combat crouch. His suspicions had been correct. The harbourside was deserted. Pubs were closed, their lanterns extinguished. Hand-carts and stalls had been pushed hurriedly off the cobbled path, their owners far more concerned about getting indoors than their worldly possessions.

The Marine scuttled across the few metres of open space, head low, trusting in the muddy yellow of his camouflaged armour and broken line of sight. It was hardly a dignified advance, but this wasn’t the time for Codex-standard tactics. He came up under the awning of a closed shopfront, considering his options.

Vile as the Drukhari were, they lived their lives in the gutters, spires and shadows of their Dark City, fighting and dying in the dark. Belamor was a city nestled in the rising cusp of a hill - the staggered, uneven houses, steeples and manses formed a network of blind alleys and kill-zones. To approach the city from the harbour was teetering on the edge of suicide against an entrenched enemy, particularly one so suited to the terrain.

All Cabar could hope for was that his battle-brothers had cost the xenos time and manpower. If the web was already drawn across the city, if there were Kabalites on rooftops with splinter rifles, he was finished, no matter his courage or ability. His own bolt carbine was currently somewhere on the bottom of the harbour, and weaponry fit for Astartes was unlikely to be present on the world for few thousand years yet.

The hidden opponents would know that. They’d fought Space Marines before, that had been obvious in the quickness of their reaction to the boarding attack and their splitting of the Infiltrator squad. Anybody who’d survived an assault from the Angels of Death knew that unity was their greatest strength. A Space Marine alone was formidable, but in formation - well, they’d won the galaxy as Legions. The Drukhari would know what to expect from an unarmed warrior: a bull rush, a death-or-glory charge that would see him take a weapon or die in the process.

They’d anticipate him putting all his trust in his wargear, praying the plate would turn the venom-needles and daggers, would carry him into melee where he could snatch a weapon and fight back on more equal footing.

What they wouldn’t anticipate was subtlety. Cabar was just a wretched monkeigh, after all. No matter how badly his squad had hurt them, no matter how tired they were from the fight, how little time they’d had to spread through Belamor, they’d never be too cautious of a primitive. They’d fall into the same trap so many of their kind had before. How much trouble could a lone Space Marine be?

But this was what the genius of Frater Cawl and the shrewdness of Lord Guilliman had come together to create. The Vanguard had been made to do things not even the Imperium could reckon with, let alone their long-time foes.

Cabar blink-clicked the runes that marked his armour’s cutting-edge functions. As the low-level scan pulsed out, he turned his immediate attention to his surroundings. The window of the store could provide interesting possibilities, but breaking it would give away his location and his only advantage. It appeared to be some kind of tannery, judging by the signage and rack of skins behind the glass. There’d be tools inside. Flensing knives, hatchets, deboning implements - but he’d need to find a way inside first, and the padlocked door may as well have been the Eternity Gate.

Scan results filtered into his helm. Nothing that registered as a body’s heat signature, either human or alien. All the mortal residents of Belamor were cowering indoors, and the Kabalites wore temperature-stable armour. Effective for blending into a crowded city, or the brutal underbelly of Commorragh, but in a city without active industry or an active population…

Yes, that was it. Impossible to get a direct fix, but there they were - shadows colder than shadows should be. Not as many as Cabar had expected, but closer by far. He must have arrived right on their heels.

He touched the bleeding heart on his pauldron. The sacrifice of his squad had bought him more than time, it had bought him an opportunity. The xenos had no time to fortify or regroup. They had simply left a disorganised rearguard before plunging into the city in force themselves, desperate to reach their target before further opposition appeared.

Creeping along the storefront, Cabar shut down the higher electronics and functions of his armour. The hum faded away entirely. The time for high-tech war was done. From this point, Cabar’s war would be won or lost by skill - and chance.

‘For those we cherish,’ he whispered. The second part of the motto would have to speak for itself when he was done.

He moved more quietly than anything wearing ceramite had a right to, pressed close against the storefronts and closed doors, waiting for clouds to veil the twin moons before he made his final approach. A lean-to had been propped against a warehouse wall - Cabar could smell the sickness coming from it, his helm’s air-filers having powered down. A beggar or similar unfortunate soul had camped out here, seeking alms, but more likely receiving kicks and abuse from the dockside crowd.

Offering a wide view of the harbour and the streets leading into the city, it was just the right place for vermin to hide. A man in a hurry to charge his foes wouldn’t have given it a second thought, would have concentrated on dark alleys and flat rooftops. A man in a hurry would have been taken in the back or flank by a clever, clever opponent.

Cabar had learned patience and endurance well. His Chapter had been on the wrong side too often in the past, had been drawn into losing battles because of haste or ill-consideration.

Not this time.

His leap was silent, graceful, devastating. Cabar came down with both feet on the lean-to, rewarded with an incredibly satisfying crunch as his full weight came down on a hidden xeno. A blade tore through the sheeting to his left - a second attacker - and Cabar caught the briefest glimpse of a pale, surprised face through the tear as he swayed away. He didn’t wait for the counterstrike. One giant fist crashed into the fabric where the xeno’s skull had been, and the piston of Cabar’s Helix Gauntlet - made to crack open Space Marine armour to extract the progenoid organs - fired with a muffled crump. The figure beneath the canvas went slack.

Glancing down, Cabar saw where bone had come through sheeting and blood had already started to pool around his boots. He stepped off quickly. He had no desire to leave an easy trail to follow, though neither of the Drukhari would be likely to track him in the near future unless a very skilled and very patient Haemonculus was nearby.

The Space Marine tossed the bodies thoroughly and swiftly. He discounted the vicious pistols and the splinter rifle. Neither had been made with human standard in mind, and Drukhari equipment was notoriously unfriendly to unpracticed wielders. The more practical weapons - weighted throwing daggers, a barbed garrotte - went into sealed pouches on Cabar’s combat harness. Hefting the long-knife the second xeno had wielded, the Adept considered a moment before casting it aside.

There was no telling how the thing would work in real combat, if it would turn into a snake and wind its way up his arm or something equally outrageous. Better not to rely on the fickle nature of the enemy’s armaments when his own Emperor-given hands would serve for the nonce.

With this blunder, the Drukhari had committed the very error they had expected of Cabar. They had focused on their mission rather than the destruction of their enemies…

* * *

There is no pleasure in Sybarite Tzamien’s work.

She knew this from the start, but she still curses herself for allowing the objectives to be so tightly defined by the Archon. Perched on a monkeigh mansion’s crude iron weathervane, wrought in the image of some ridiculous prey animal, she surveys the silent city of Belamor through enhanced optics. There isn’t a soul outdoors to ‘accidentally’ gut, no screams to be torn from the crude people below. There’s nothing.

And even less than that, as she feels the sudden absence of the two-person ambush team from her neuro-link. She grits her teeth. There had been no time to pursue the fallen Space Marine, no time to inflict proper pain upon those who had remained - the attack had cost her forces valuable time, valuable lives, and those losses were compounding.

It wasn’t the human warriors she was concerned about. Certainly not the cattle below. But other forces moved in this filthy abode, and it was to avoid their attention that secrecy and swiftness had been made paramount.

Tzamien curses. She activates her communicator. ‘Rezoar. Belom. Take your squads to the junction. Ensure the monkeigh goes no further.’

‘Do you want it alive?’ comes the reply. She can’t tell which of the twins it is.

The temptation is strong. There is glory to be had in such a capture - after Tzamien had instructed it in the arts of anguish first, of course, for dogging her heels. ‘No,’ she replies, and the reluctance is genuine. ‘Be quick, then return to your search pattern. We must be gone before dawn.’

‘I hear and obey, Sybarite.’

Tzamien puts the Space Marine from her mind. Now, if she were a pathetic human, where would she hide?

* * *

In the shadows behind a low stone wall, Cabar hid.

He’d pushed up as far and fast as he’d dared, knowing that with his information warfare suite disabled the Drukhari would be able to organise and encircle him unhindered. The rapidity of their response had still nearly caught him by surprise: it had been a mix of paranoia and the filtering of sounds that might have been a cat on a tiled roof that had caused him to take cover.

The xenos had decided that their quarry wouldn’t risk the rooftops and exposure under the intermittent moons, but nor could they remain aloft themselves at the risk of letting the Space Marine slip through their net.

In the brutal street-fighting of the Dark City, there was only one way to deal with an opponent who refused to commit to honest battle - overwhelming force. The six members of a Kabalite squad leapfrogged each-other down the street that a moment earlier Cabar had been about to ascend. Each was intimately aware of the others positioning, indicating experience and comfort with their fellows - veterans, or whatever passed for it in the motley armed forces of the Drukhari. In a few seconds, the flankers would be coming over or around the stone wall.

Cabar judged their positions by what he could see - two on the far side of the street, two haunting the middle, which meant two would be about to expose him. He’d have only a few seconds once they did to make his move.

When the first xeno vaulted the barrier, the Adept grabbed the alien’s head, muffling its shocked exhalation. His other arm shot out to lock the rifle against his opponent’s chest, unable to fire. They stood in tableau for a precious moment - that simple span of time that it took for the flanker’s partner to believe it was safe to proceed.

As soon as the second Drukhari was starting to clear the wall, Cabar crushed the first’s skull in his grip. There was little resistance against a force that could tear plates off a tank. Cabar turned to put the corpse between him and his next foe in case the Kabalite was quicker on the draw, but the xeno barely had time to land before the Space Marine’s fist was lashing out. Another skull shattered under a merciless, instantly lethal blow.

Cabar completed his turn, discarding the first corpse and checking the second’s fall, but to do so he had to release his grip on the splinter rifle which clattered on the cobbles. In an instant, the Adept had whipped the throwing daggers from his belt and into the space he’d last sighted the xenos pair in the middle of the street before vaulting the wall himself, exchanging positions with the unlucky duo he’d slain.

Only one of Cabar’s thrown weapons found its target, sending a Kabalite gurgling and thrashing to the ground, but the three remaining reacted without hesitation, showering the far side of the low wall with rifle fire. Crystalline splinters snapped and broke on stone, failing to find a target into which to discharge their lethal poison.

The Drukhari would adjust their fire in a moment. They’d snapped shots out at the appearance of a threat rather than the threat itself, and in a moment they’d deduce that the Space Marine had slipped from cover. A moment, that’s all they needed to survive. A mere moment.

But in that thin slice of time, Cabar was already moving, circling, pushing his transhuman body and the marvellous engineering of Mark X armour to their limits. The Drukhari were faster than a base human. The Aeldari as a species were renowned for their unnatural grace and agility, their incredible control, their mindfulness. The Dark Kin took those racial advantages and honed them to the keenest of edges in their ruthless society, a society that forged vicious killers whose names were feared across the galaxy.

It wasn’t enough.

Cabar lowered his shoulder and ran through the surviving Kabalite before she had a chance to correct her aim. Bones broke, blood sprayed, but the Adept didn’t pause to see the damage - he’d incapacitated the foe, yet two remained.

The last pair split in either direction, hoping to force the Space Marine to pause, or at least choose badly. Dull spines protruded from beneath the barrels of their rifles: fearsome monomolecular blades that would pare even ceramite with the ease of a fisherman shucking shells. With no time to properly aim, with no guarantee that the splinters would find a seal or groove in power armour, and with no certainty that the poison would be fast enough or effective enough to bring their target down, the Kabalites chose to make their stand in the ancient way.

It was an audacious move. The machine-spirit of Cabar’s armour shrieked as a thrust pierced his side, flush along his ribs. His response was instinctive: he kicked the xeno in the chest, the force defeating the light weave the Kabalite wore and pulping every major organ in the alien’s torso.

The other Kabalite was more ambitious, aiming her thrust for Cabar’s head - but it was a smaller target, and he ducked to the side to escape harm, the momentum from his kick carrying him past. The Adept turned a fraction of a section faster than his opponent, his elbow slamming into the Kabalite’s skull with enough force to snap her neck.

Alone in the street, Cabar breathed hard. There was a fierce fire in his chest: he willed the hammering of his hearts to slow. His attack had been ill-advised and exactly the sort of suicidal foolishness that would have seen him dead to begin with, but the enemy had expected a war of stealth in their fresh pursuit. Keeping them off-balance and uncertain gave him certain advantages, but it also ran terrible risks. The red haze at the corner of his vision, the prick of his angel’s teeth on his lips - the twin curses of the Blood Angels had been passed down to their Successors, and the Lamenters were familiar with both.

Many had thought the Primaris immune, or at least resistant - that brief hope had been quashed in the most tragic way. Cabar shook his head, and the red retreated - for the moment. He needed all his wits about him, more than the strength that the Thirst would offer.

Think. To reach him so quickly, the Drukhari would have to have been searching close by. They would not have done so in ignorance, meaning they had an idea of where their quarry was located - not on the harbourfront, but close to it, likely in the thin band of workshops and light industry that banded Belamor like a notched belt overtaken by a protruding gut. That made sense.

Why hide in that fortress on the hill, or the district of the rich and privileged? Too obvious. A mind shrewd enough - or at least, a person connected enough - to divine the coming of a Drukhari raid would have thrown themselves down the deepest bolthole in town.

There were few places more well-known as dens of intrigue and secrecy than bars and brothels, of which Belamor was blessed with an abundance of, but only one was more than a century old. Only one proudly hung a weather-stained sign of a grinning rodent outside its door. Only one tavern had been owned and operated by Belamor’s current _de facto_ leader in his misspent youth.

* * *

Sybarite Tzamien idly licked the blood from her gloves.

It wasn’t particularly satisfying, but one had to keep up appearances. To command a detachment of Kabalite Warriors was not a given rank, it was decided within by the warriors themselves - with knives in the back whenever weakness was shown. Her leadership had been unquestioned, and her forces continued to obey her without comment, but Tzamien was not ignorant of her position.

Rezoar and his squad were dead. That was a shame, but more importantly, they were dead on her orders. That was weakness, and far more dangerous.

This was supposed to be simple. How had things gone so wrong?

Was she losing her touch? Or was there a mole inside the Kabal, feeding information to her enemies? Had the Space Marines had another warband close by? It seemed strange that a lone warrior - and a medic at that - would be so immediately lethal. Was the Imperial attack simply being used as cover by a rival - hers or her Kabals - to spoil the raid and steal their prize?

The endless politics of the Dark City were delight and despair in equal measure, but if Tzamien hadn’t enjoyed them, she would have fled to the cold embrace of the new, dead god with the others.

‘Kill me,’ begged the monkeigh offal through a mouth of pulled teeth, the blood staining his blue doublet a delicious shade. ‘Please, kill me.’

He’d given the target’s location before Tzamien had even started on the man’s fingernails. It was pathetic, really, and barely worth her effort - but, as she’d acknowledged, appearances had to be kept up and it wouldn’t do to have the Kabal sniffing out any sign of shakiness or lack of resolve. They’d turn on her like _sauvix_ in a blood-den.

Tzamien considered letting Belom know his brother had died, then decided against it. The fool would only hurry over to spoil her fun. She’d take her prize alone and wait for whatever forces had been interfering with her affairs, and let them know just how displeased she was.

‘Kill me,’ the wretch repeated.

‘Later, perhaps,’ she replied with her most winning smile.

The man let go of his bowels at last.

Tzamien left him crucified on the terrace, lithely moving down to the streets below, aglow with the satisfaction of pain, terror and a job well done.


	2. II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hunt continues.

The band of brothels, pubs, gambling dens and various houses of ill-repute was known to locals as the Finger.

It crooked just like the leading digit of a scantily-clad madam leaning from a second-story window. It lay just along the skin of Belamor’s more industrious, working-class districts as though reading the city’s pulse. True enough, one could tell which way the population’s mood was blowing on any given day by taking a stroll down the mucked cobble of the Finger. All you had to do was keep your ears open and a hand on your valuables. Two hands, if possible.

Time mattered little in places like this. Someone, somewhere was coming off shift with a pouch of good coin and appetites of varying kinds and consistency. The Finger had housed the first establishments to turn a profit in Belamor. Like as anything, the Finger was where the first establishments of the fledgeling city had been founded.

It felt its age. Cabar crept by timber domiciles crippled by centuries of age and disrepair, supported almost entirely by the modern stone buildings interspersed between them. The whole district was parasitic - remove just one, seemingly inconsequential building, and whole streets would collapse. There was no difference in the class or standing of either the businesses or tenants, here. Just one thick, murky human soup, filled with bone and gristle and worse.

Many of the Adeptus Astartes looked down on base humanity, when they considered it at all. Squalor like this would only confirm their disgust. But Cabar wasn’t built like his older brethren. He’d been made to move through these underworlds, to see them with unclouded eyes. All the beggars, all the whores, all the scum from the bottom of society’s boot had been, at least for one night, given shelter. None had been left out as easy prey. There was poverty and desperation and all the little horrors that happened behind closed doors here, but also grace. At least for one night, the city had looked to its own and held them close.

He might never understand the men and women of the Imperium. Empathy, though - that was attainable.

He could look beyond the ramshackle buildings, the creaking, cracked, canted edifices, all the vice and debauchery and poor hygiene. He could see the face beneath the grime, and he understood the fear that kept even the bustling Finger as dead and quiet as a corpse. It stoked a different kind of anger than that brought on by battle or his gene-sire’s gifts. A cold fire, the kind that never truly burned out, the kind that could be carried for a lifetime.

This was the true bane the Drukhari brought. Fear. Not just pain - the xenos glutted themselves well enough on that - but the _fear_ of pain to come. Even when the whip was not over them, the people would dread its return. They would never be free. Not truly.

Not until every last one of the invaders was dead, their bodies left to rot in the streets for all to see. Though the anger and the mission drove at him, Cabar kept his pace slow and subtle as he moved from shadow to shadow, beneath carts, behind walls. Time was an enemy he and his quarry shared, but their hand had been tipped by inaction and arrogance. If he were facing humans, Aeldari, T’au, even Orks, his assault on the squad would have brought the combined force of the foe down upon him in overwhelming, overlapping strength. His death would have been assured.

There was no sign of further pursuit. The squad’s death would not have gone unmarked, which meant only one thing: a warrior had marked him out for a personal challenge. Only a Champion of Chaos would have the same arrogance to look for single combat against a provenly lethal enemy.

Cabar was being hunted. He could feel it, the way the night tensed around him. There’d be an end to this soon enough.

The only question remained: where? The Drukhari would prefer to remain out on the street, to be able to their agility and range advantage to its fullest. Cabar wanted to get in close and make it a brawl - the slavers relied on poisons and weapons of pain, and he was confident that his superhuman physiology would be proof against all but the most potent of these. At least long enough to bring the xenos champion down with him.

They’d want a leisurely stalk, a game of cat-and-mouse in a maze that suited them. But they also needed to accomplish an objective.

Cabar blink-clicked a sliver of power back into his mapping utilities. A brief topography overlaid his vision for a moment then was gone, committed to memory. He was no more than a long block away from the Horned Rat, where the objective was - by the Space Marine’s reckoning - holed up. If he could make it there, survival became a possibility.

Out here, exposed even as he crouched against a wall in the dark, he may as well have been dancing naked on the High Table. Surprise had taken him this far. Perhaps the unexpected would be his salvation once more.

Cabar tensed, then lunged into motion, breaking cover at full clip. A foul xenos curse spat directly from above his hiding place - a moment longer and he’d have been spat on the lethal-looking spear the assassin had in its - _her_ \- hands. All hooks and barbs, it was more fishing-trident than weapon, made to snare and gut beasts rather than men. The xeno who wielded it was just as brutal, her sinuous black bodyglove blending in with her surroundings, her red hair framing a face that bore eyes in the same way a goblet bore amethysts.

The look in them nearly made him stumble. The Adeptus Astartes know no fear, but they can understand killer instinct, and the murder plain in the alien’s gaze, had it been made manifest, would have pinned Cabar to the ground like a lance through the heart. The pale skin contorted and pulled in an expression of anger around her eyes, but the boiling emotion never touched the cool black any more than a droplet of water could extinguish an inferno.

Lifeless, yet brimming with life. Dark, yet murderously bright. Soulless. Cabar had fought a void-shark once, on a walk across a wrecked Imperial ship. The Drukhari reminded him of how he’d felt, in the middle of a vast empty plain of metal, with an apex predator bearing down on him…

And the Drukhari was up in a moment, her balance and poise perfect as she shifted grip from a two-handed thrust to a one-handed cast, aiming for the Lamenter’s rapidly-departing back. With barely a grunt, she threw-

* * *

-and watched the hunting-spear curve in mid-flight, away from where she had anticipated the Space Marine to step, where precisely he had.

‘No!’

The exhalation bounced about the empty street in a mocking echo of Tzamien’s voice, thrown back at her in failure. She unclenched her fists with effort before sliding down the rooftop, her high boots stained for the first time with the foul dust of the monkeigh hovel.

Her aim had been perfect, her prediction sure. That she had missed - no, that her throw had been deflected - meant the worst. That those whose attention they had sought to escape had found them out at last. Or, more likely, had known they would be here and had been enjoying the spectacle as an invisible audience, waiting to see how this minor act would play out. That was always their way - the outcome known, but the lower plays still of some mild interest or amusement.

It pricked her pride in the worst way to be considered nothing but a bit player in some cosmic game. ‘Keep watching,’ she snarled at the empty shadows. They did not answer.

Not a complete loss, however. The Space Marine’s flight confirmed what the baser monkeigh had babbled: her prey would be found in a middling tavern in this district. Though it would have been more enjoyable to stalk at her leisure, Tzamien could not resist the drama of slaying the would-be defender in front of those he thought to protect. Oh, she could almost taste the despair, the fear as their supposed hero fell.

Enough of patience. Enough of self-restraint.

Tzamien pulled the hunting-spear from where it had struck into the cobbles. Black liquid oozed from flanges and hooks, the weapon weeping like a scolded child. It was as frustrated as she was. Her very soul was wracked by need - to feel the life be wrung from a living body, to feel the pain and terror nourish her spirit, to push back the endless gnawing of She-Who-Thirsts for but one more day.

‘Keep watching,’ she told the empty street, more confidently. She tucked the spear under her arm.

Tzamien began to run, hot on Cabar’s trail, determined to bring the monkeigh to heel - to make it suffer for its inexcusable lack of manners in not dying when and where she wanted it to. She did not hear the tinkle of merry bells that moved close after her - or, if she did, she pretended not to. There are things even monsters are not willing to face in the dark.


End file.
